For many types of sliced food products, customers prefer to purchase the food product in packages containing a specific slice count, rather than weight. Packaging sliced food products by weight does not allow a customer to reliably determine the number of slices of a given product that are contained in the package. The number of slices will fluctuate depending on a variety of factors, such as the thickness and length of the sliced food product. Purchasing sliced food products by slice count can allow a customer to consistently determine the number of units of a given food product in a package. In addition, customers frequently prefer to have the sliced food products assembled in groups of a predetermined quantity. The predetermined quantity is often dictated by the needs or end use of a particular customer. Assembling the food product slices into groups of a predetermined quantity, therefore, can be preferable.
To achieve these objectives, a food product mass is generally sliced into food product slices, with the food product slices assembled, for example, on a carrier sheet in groups of a predetermined quantity. Frequently, the food product mass will not yield an even number of groups of the predetermined quantity. As a result, the last group that is sliced and assembled from the food product mass will frequently be incomplete and contain less than the predetermined quantity of slices. For example, a slab of bacon may yield 120 slices of bacon that is to be grouped in predetermined quantities of nine. Thus, there will be three slices of bacon that are not part of the groupings of nine. At this point, three options are generally available. The incomplete carrier sheet can be retained and assembled with the remaining complete carrier sheets. Retaining the incomplete carrier sheets may be a viable option for packages sold by weight. For customers preferring to purchase food products by a specific slice count, however, this option disrupts the ability of the customer to receive an accurate slice count for the package of sliced food products. Alternatively, the incomplete carrier sheet can be discarded, even though it contains good quality food product slices. As a result, the food product slices on the carrier sheet are then wasted. In the aggregate, such waste can be quite costly. Finally, the incomplete carrier sheet can be completed by hand placement of the necessary quantity of the sliced food product onto the incomplete carrier sheet. However, such manual manipulation can be time consuming and costly.
Another concern in the packaging of sliced food products is the speed at which a conveyor system can operate to slice, assemble, and stack the sliced food products. The stacking step is generally the slowest and, therefore, can be the limiting step in the speed of the process. A variety of stacking systems exist, with one example of a stacking system including a series of paddles that collect the sliced food products and then rotate to each side to stack the sliced food products. The rotary motion of the paddle system increases the distance the group of stacked food products must fall to create a stack of sliced food products, with the increased fall distance thereby increasing the time needed to stack the food products. As a result, the stacking step often comprises the most time consuming portion of the conveyor system, thereby limiting the speed of the entire system. A stacking system that is able to stack sliced food products at a greater rate of speed will allow the slicer to slice at an increased rate and allow the conveyors to move at an increased speed, to thereby allow the entire conveyor system to operate at an increased rate to increase production.